


An Exploration and Analysis of the Noble Lie in Plato’s "The Republic" and American Classical Liberalism

by plutodolohov



Series: school work [4]
Category: Original Work
Genre: #MeToo, #metoo movement, Classicism, Classism, Essay, Gen, Liberalism, MeToo, MeToo movement, Modern America, Other, Politics, Religion, Republic, Slavery, Socratic Dialogue, Suicide, The Republic, american classical liberalism, discussions of philosophy, divine messages, facism, he is NOT my president i do not supprt him i wanna be very clear, lack of rights, modern interpretation/perspective, noble lie, plato - Freeform, president donald j trump, trans military ban
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-17 21:28:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29232315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plutodolohov/pseuds/plutodolohov
Summary: This was written on December 14, 2019 for a class called Foundations of Democracy.
Series: school work [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2145501





	1. Abstract

In this paper, I aim to look at Plato’s “noble lie” and all its modern equivalents, as well as the implications of both the modern and ancient “lie.” Plato discusses the “noble lie,” which he claims is the basis for every society not founded on might-is-right methodology, and how it is necessary for the functioning of a society. Without it, there is chaos and no way for the ruling class to truly rule. The “noble lie” that many point out in Plato is his separation of souls and the casting of gold, silver, bronze and iron souled people. He claims that his “lie” then becomes the truth through the slow process of citizen-conditioning, where the gold truly become smarter and the bronze lose most, if not all, potential intelligence. The question that arises, and that I will explore, is, assuming the values of classical liberalism, specifically American liberalism, is a version of a “noble lie” and whether, like Plato’s hierarchy of souls, these values become true through the teachings and/or manipulations of the leaders on a generational timeline.


	2. Essay

Nation-building has always been a difficult process, from the infrastructure needed to the culture-grooming. Often, there is dissent, either from within or without; thus, what is needed is a uniting factor, whether it be fact or fiction. A noble lie, or the use of myth to maintain cohesivity in society, is the most used process to glue society together. For Plato, while building his Republic, his entire city-in-speech was based upon his noble lie - without it, the fabric of the city would fall apart. Even two thousand years later, noble lies are used to keep a country together, including the United States. The fundamentals of American liberalism as they were preached upon the creation of them over three hundred years ago can be seen as a version of the noble lie, as they have gained more and more infallibility as time has gone on. The noble lie the republic Plato imagines is reliant on has influenced many nation-builders in the years since its emergence, and is often generalized as the founding base of many modern societies. Some say there is a modern equivalent of the “noble lie” - looking specifically at the United States, it can be said that the same generational logic that allowed the soul hierarchy within Plato’s republic to work so well can be applied to the United States’ liberal claims within its Constitution, phasing them from ideology to truth through the subtle influencing of the populus.

To take a look at the noble lie either past or present authors have created, the parameters of a noble lie must be explained. To use a noble lie is not simply to propose and disseminate a myth with a moral; it is to totally mold culture, society, and the people into the express mindset that a leader or group of elites want. Often, the noble lie purported has religious context: to keep people in check, there is a higher power with absolute authority: God. From there, leaders claim a divine right to rule, a holy backing from the authority above, allowing them to rule _de facto_ and with _vis maior_. Without some form of unquestionable force behind them, a leader would be unable to overcome large threats to their rule, ultimately ending in the conclusion of the era of that ruler and the ruin of society through the destabilized and fragmented populus. Religion overcame that barrier by giving the ruler a metaphysically boundless army against those who revolted. The people were in awe and fear of God, and most dared not to displease Him or the ruler He had appointed lest they suffer eternal damnation in Hell. The religious centers of the ancient world cast an authoritative shadow more powerful than the state’s, which led many times to battle between religious and national power. This power struggle eventually culminated in the separation between church and state in many countries, most famously in the United States. Without God as the foremost adjudicator in people’s lives, a religious vacuum was created, where there was no longer an all-powerful figure to enforce loyalty to a system, for all religiously based politics was deemed impossible. However, though the two bodies of church and state are separated in writing, there is a large sacred presence in the law of the United States, filling the vacuum of power created. The question that must be asked is whether the United States' noble lie follows the same progression outlined in Plato or whether it has evolved to new places. 

Looking more at Plato, the need for a noble lie is clear. Plato, in his creation of his city-in-speech, has abolished all religion, stating that, “The [tales] Hesiod and Homer told us, and the other poets too. They surely composed false tales for human beings and used to tell them and still do tell them” ( 377d). The “false tales,” he claims, are the reason for the disunity present in modern society, for they expose the young and impressionable to the faults and random actions of the gods and the mercurial morals the gods have. While Plato would like to completely lose the idea of a noble lie, religious or not, he concedes “a contrivance for one of those falsehoods that come into being in case of need, of which we were just now talking, some noble one [...]” (414b-c). To Plato, if he must have some myth for unity, by removing the offending material, he can then impose an adequate solution to unity, and remove any unwanted messages from the material. He believes that by teaching the kids from a young age about the social hierarchy and the respective jobs those of a certain caste have, he can force unity upon everyone. Plato clearly states, “this myth [...] would have a good effect, making them more inclined to care for the state and one another” (415c-d). The myth itself is extensive; according to Plato:

>   
>  “[..] but the god, in fashioning those of you who are competent to rule, mixed gold in at their birth; this is why they are most honored; in auxiliaries, silver; and iron and bronze in the farmers and the other craftsmen. So, because you're all related, although for the most part you'll produce offspring like yourselves, it sometimes happens that a silver child will be born from a golden parent, a golden child from a silver parent, and similarly all the others from each other. Hence the god commands the rulers first and foremost to be of nothing such good guardians and to keep over nothing so careful a watch as the children, seeing which of these metals is mixed in their souls. And, if a child of theirs should be bom with an admixture of bronze or iron, by no manner of means are they to take pity on it, but shall assign the proper value to its nature and thrust it out among the craftsmen or the farmers; and, again, if from these men one should naturally grow who has an admixture of gold or silver, they will honor such ones and lead them up, some to the guardian group, others to the auxiliary, believing that there is an oracle that the city will be destroyed when an iron or bronze man is its guardian.” (415a-c)

Each point within this section, both explicit and implicit, is important, but we begin with an explanation of the noble lie being presented. Plato claims all people are born with some form of metal within their souls, whether that be gold, silver, bronze, or iron. The source for this metal is divine; Plato claims it is “the god, in fashioning those of you who are competent to rule, mixed gold in at their birth” (415a) and again pulls divinity as his backing source when he talks about children: “Hence the god commands the rulers first and foremost to be of nothing such good guardians and to keep over nothing so careful a watch as the children” (415b). Thus, though he had hoped to make as secular a noble lie as possible, it can be seen that there must be some religious aspect, where the same loyalty that people had once shown God must now be transferred to some other thing, or what Plato calls, “some noble one” ( 414c). Within the divine message, there is a hierarchy of the soul-metals: gold is the most pure and is the most honored, with positions as “guardians,” as Plato calls the leaders of this city-in-speech; silver is next, and is kept as backup for the gold-souled; finally, bronze and iron are the working class, crafting and farming and making up the bulk of the city. The noble lie defined, we can look at the application within the city. While it seems as though the hierarchy would lead to social disunity due to the segregation of people, Plato’s plan works upon a generational timeline. While the first members of his city-in-speech would have difficulty aligning themselves to the new world order due to their background of more caste-free society, over time, due to the teachings that are being put into the people’s heads, especially if taught from a young age, it will permeate down, so that the teachings in school are complemented through generational family teachings. The teachings are believed by the people, and then become true through belief in that system and acting upon that belief; his myth becomes the truth through the slow process of citizen-conditioning, where the gold truly become smarter and the bronze lose most, if not all, potential intelligence.

While the myth-to-truth process is easily clear within the context of Plato’s city-in-speech, it can seen, albeit with some effort, within the United States as well. American liberalism, as defined in the writings of the Founding Father of the United States, especially Thomas Jefferson and the Constitution, can be seen as a modern form of the noble lie. The United States, when they wrote the Constitution, made sure to include the separation of church and state within, with President Thomas Jefferson writing in a letter to the Danbury Baptists, “I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, ‘thus building a wall of separation between Church and State,” referencing the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. However, the Constitution is written with language that attributed a sacred power to certain words and the ideas expressed by those words, such as “Liberty”,“State”, and “Law” (Madison). Capitalizing those words evokes the same reverence and blind religious loyalty people would have had to God. By using these techniques, the Founding Fathers were able to make the law the new noble lie of the United States, essentially replacing religion while keeping its most influential aspects. 

Now, the law was unquestionable and supreme, and was inherently sacred, much the way the Bible and God would have been in the Western past. The writers redefined the noble lie, making one of the most secular versions known now. However, what has the staying factor been? If the noble lie is truly in place, it would be true in action through generational citizen-conditioning. Looking directly at the Declaration of Independence, which claims “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” (Jefferson, “Declaration”) it can be reasoned that a test for success of the noble lie can be seen in how the country is currently functioning. Working under the assumption that enough time has passed where if a noble lie were in place, there would be results evident, we can look to see if any progress has been made. However, with differing, polarized opinions on both sides, it is difficult to see whether any progress towards equality and universal life, liberty, and happiness has taken place. There is evidence that even in the case of a noble lie being present, it has never taken root: President Trump banned transgender individuals from entering any branch of the military, with The National Center for Transgender Equality noting “any of the thousands of current transgender service members who come out, or is found out, after April 12 [2019] and is not willing to renounce and suppress their identity will be subject to discharge” (“Trump”); Newsweek reports “black men are 2.5 times more likely than white men to be victims of this form of violence [referring to police force],” (Gander) mentioing on top of that fact “police officers in the U.S. killed more people than other advanced industrial democracies” (Gander); and PBS reported in June of 2019 “The rate of U.S. adolescents and young adults dying of suicide has reached its highest level [since 2000]” (Frazee and Morales); and many more such statistics that show the United States to be far from freedom. Even in terms of personal, subjective data, the Pew Research Center notes “many Americans see the country falling short when it comes to some of the core elements of democracy,” (Geiger) making it seem as though in no way is any progress towards equality and universal liberty being made. 

That being said, there are larger events that occured that have potential to be seen as progress of the myth-to-truth process: freedom was given to slaves in 1865 through the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution; women were given the vote through the Nineteenth Amendment in 1919; African-American were given full rights in the 1950s; and the #MeToo movement that started in the United States went viral and global, with online platform Council on Foreign Relations noting “In 2018, the movement went global as millions came forward to share their stories. In Italy the movement became #QuellaVoltaChe (“that time when”), in Spain it is #YoTambien, in France it is #BalanceTonPorc (“squeal on your pig”), and in Arab-speaking countries it is #AnaKaman” (Lindsay). However, it must be noted that these large-scale positives are outweighed by the negatives: slavery was present in the United States for over 200 years before the thirteenth Amendment and is even written into the Sonstitution; women and African-Americans should not have to fight to be seen as alegitimate people and worthy of the same rights as the white man; and the #MeToo movement should never have existed because men should not be aggressing people the way they did to those women. Everything that has been worthy of note from the United States since its creation has stemmed from a place of violence, disunity, or misbehaviour - calling these milestones examples of the progress of the noble lie, then, is a misnomer. Rather, they are corrections upon blights that should have never existed. Had the noble lie of universal equality, liberty, and happiness been achieved, the results of that order would have been seen now, over 250 years later. In terms of scientific thinking, there has been more than enough generations to see results of a test to then confirm or deny a hypothesis - for the United States, it can be seen that the noble lie is not functioning, and as such has not succeeded in its original goal. 

In looking at the noble lie, in addition to setting parameters, the vices must also been addressed. First, we must look at the participation required for a noble lie to work. Absolute buy-in is needed for a noble lie to succeed, for then is created a homogenous mindset that allows function without question. While it is easy to imagine this occurring in Plato’s city-in-speech, for there, the people have had the reset button pressed upon them (so to speak), allowing the noble lie to take hold fairly easily due to the lack of opposing ideologies, applying this to the United States, which prides itself on being a melting pot of culture, people, and ideology, the noble lie was fated to fail. Even though the noble lie presented in the United States is one that is fairly easy to apply to all people, the different ideologies and freedom of speech that are inherent to the system disallow the noble lie to root. Another criticism of the noble lie, specifically to Plato, is that the phrase “noble lie” is a mistranslation, some feel. Instead, according to Christopher Morrisey, it should be “noble doctrine,” for “doctrine” better encapsulates what Plato means. Morrisey writes:

>   
>  The phrase “noble lie” does not even occur in the text of Plato’s _Republic_. The over-translated Greek phrase is _gennaion ti hen_ , “some one noble [thing]”.[1] The tendentious over-translation assumes that a neuter singular nominative case noun is to be understood in agreement with the adjective _gennaion: gennaion_ [ _pseudos_ ], “noble [lie].” Moreover, this conventional mistranslation omits the crucial two qualifying nominative singular adjectives ti and hen that are in grammatical agreement with _gennaion_. Hence, when translated as “noble lie,” the Plato Doctrine is corrupted in two ways. (Morrisey, para. 2)

The difference is in the multitude of falsehoods told. While Plato speaks of only one - the souls and their apparent purity - many take it to be many lies i.e. propaganda, or the use of multiple angles to manipulate a people into one mindset. Due to the incorrect, or rather, mistranslation of the Greek as “noble lie,” the widespread interpretation that Plato is attempting to fundamentally change a society through mass propaganda filters down and is ingrained in people’s minds and analyses due to how comparisons between the modern and ancient ideology can more easily be made. However, this downplay of the singularity of Plato’s manipulation leads to modern politics to be taken less seriously, with the possibility of severe actions swept aside as part of a larger “reform.”

Thus, it can be seen that the noble lie as purported in Plato has not taken root in the United States. The very nature of what makes the country so enticing disallows any noble lie from truly taking hold - there will always be voices of dissent that cannot be removed without backlash. Plato, on the other hand, was free to design his city as he wished, due to the imaginary element. However, it can be said that, by adding the real, a noble lie is doomed, for there are too many factors out of control that would need to be constant for it to take hold.


	3. Works Cited

Bloom, Allan, translator. The Republic of Plato. Basic Books, 2016. 

Frazee, Gretchen, and Patty Gorena Morales. “Suicide among Teens and Young Adults Reaches Highest Level since 2000.” PBS, 18 June 2019, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/suicide-among-teens-and-young-adults-reaches-highest-level-since-2000.

Gander, Kashmira. “Black Men Are 2.5 Times More Likely to Be Killed by Police over Their Lifetime than White Men.” Newsweek, 5 Aug. 2019, https://www.newsweek.com/black-men-2-5-times-more-likely-killed-police-white-men-1452549.

Geiger, A. W. “How Americans See Their Country and Their Democracy.” Pew Research Center, 4 July 2018, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/07/04/how-americans-see-their-country-and-their-democracy/.

Jefferson, Thomas. “Https://Www.archives.gov/Founding-Docs/Declaration-Transcript.” National Archives, https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript.

Jefferson, Thomas. “Jefferson's Letter to the Danbury Baptists.” Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9806/danpre.html.   
Lindsay, James M. “Ten Most Significant World Events in 2018.” Council on Foreign Relations, 20 Dec. 2018, https://www.cfr.org/blog/ten-most-significant-world-events-2018.

Madison, James. “The Constitution of the United States of America.” Constitute, https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/United_States_of_America_1992.  
Morrissey, Christopher. “The Truth about Plato’s ‘Noble Lie.’” The Imaginative Conservative, 16 Nov. 2016, https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2016/11/platos-noble-lie-christopher-morrissey.html#_ftn8.

“Trump Administration Announces Beginning of Transgender Military Ban on April 12.” National Center for Transgender Equality, 12 Mar. 2019, https://transequality.org/press/releases/trump-administration-announces-beginning-of-transgender-military-ban-on-april-12.


End file.
